6 New Weapons That You Literally Cannot Hide From

[Are_grits_groceries]

#6.Bullets That Will Outright Chase Your Ass Down
<snip>
Until somebody came up with a way to develop guided bullets.

The building full of crazed geniuses known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have developed the EXACTO program, which involves using "smart" bullets complete with processors and steering vanes to allow the bullet to correct its trajectory in mid-fucking-air.

So even if you duck around a corner as some asshole is shooting at you, his bullets will supposedly be able to just swing around and follow your ass. We aren't talking about some wimpy small-caliber bullets either; the only size they are building these in (for now) are .50 caliber BMG, huge rounds which are intended either to kill trucks, or explode a guy's head from several miles away.

Just in case the word "overkill" hasn't entered your mind yet, they've got a much more explodey version of that idea, too. It's the XM-25 "smart" grenade launcher. It has a laser range-finder built in that can detect the distance to the wall or trench that you're hiding behind. That way the shell knows not to explode until it's right next to your fucking head. That's right; it won't detonate until after it punches through the wall you're hiding behind, but just before it hits you in the nose.

The XM-25 has a range of different munitions it can use, from high explosive to thermobaric, all of which are designed to make your trip to the other side as sudden and unexpected as it is horrifying.

#5.BOSS Will Find You
But they can't shoot at you if they can't find you, right? After all, two can play the sniper game, and maybe you're hidden a hundred yards away in some bushes, or peeking through a small hole in a building.

Ah, wait. You have suddenly exploded. It was your eyeballs that gave you away.

You can thank the Battlefield Optical Surveillance System, a device that can be mounted on a truck that scans the landscape with lasers and sensors. When it sees the glint of a rifle scope, or your freaking retinas, it lights you up with a laser beam, at which point a bunch of soldiers turn you into salsa.

If you do avoid detection, god help you if you actually fire a shot. That's where the Boomerang system comes in, which uses an array of microphones to instantly judge the speed and direction of the shot, based on the muzzle report and the shockwave of the bullet as it zips past. Immediately it knows where the shot came from, and even what kind of weapon it is.

So if you only get one shot, you'd better have something pretty badass, right? Like a rocket propelled grenade? Ah, that won't do you much good with the goddamned invisible force field protecting the vehicle you shot at.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_yz_ONZltA
DARPA calls it the Iron Curtain, and it uses an invisible pulse to detonate shells before they can hit the vehicle. Our only question is how long until they have a beam that just makes the enemy's own rocket explode right in his face.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18473_6-new-weapons-that-you-literally-cannot-hide-from.html

There are 4 more if you want to find out about other new scary inventions.

We spend billions for this and yet have no money for social programs.

[barbtries]

1. we're a sick nation.

i went to check msnbc's home page after i read about the 25 WV miners. Duke's win was at the center of the page, with pictures. "We spend billions for this and yet have no money for social programs."

as a nation we are sick.

[Echo In Light]

4. +1

[KharmaTrain]

2. Those Bullets Remind Me Of Tex Avery...

The famous cartoonist of the 30s-60s...I could see Droopy aiming the gun with the wolf running and the bullet following him. Scary when old cartoons are a harbinger of the future world.

[Champion Jack]

3. I wonder how much of that stuff really works

[Javaman]

5. Does it matter? Just knowing that people are thinking this crap up scares me. nt

[WilliamPitt]

6. I had a Marine staff sargeant invite me to come shoot those smart bullets not long ago.

He'd just come back from a tour in Iraq, and was really excited about the things. In his opinion, they would make things a lot safer for civilians. The way he explained it was to describe a crowd of 25I raqis. Within the crowd are six or seven guys with AKs or RPGs. With current conventional weaponry, he said, they'd basically get an order mow down the whole group to get the guys with the guns. But with this new technology, he said, the gunsight would lock on those seven guys alone, and the bullets would be able to take them down without wiping out the surrounding non-combatants. In other words, he and his fellow Marines could kill more effectively, and not have to walk through two dozen civilian corpses to confirm they got the guys they wanted.

He got redeployed to Afghanistan, so I never got to shoot the things. Just saw him again the other day. He's home safe and sound.

[Cid_B]

7. Cool stuff...

Seen some of this to include the boomerang which is out there now...

[Statistical]

8. Yeah Boomerang was in effect when I was in Iraq.

Wasn't sensitive enough to be used for general firefights (lots of conflicting noises) however it was used to ID locations of snipers.

Pretty damn effective and simply. Just a bunch of directional microphones and some off the shelf processors and some whiz-bang software to do the math.

From the sounds it determines the elevation (angle up & down), deflection (angle left & right), and distance. Put all that together with a little more math combined with GPS to tell you where you are and you can tell where the enemy is.

Outputs an 8 digit grid coordinate to the enemy.

[The2ndWheel]

9. When all nations of the world pay for a common defence

then we might not have to pay so much. Until then, the US taxpayer will be on the hook for the global military. It's not fair, but, that's how it is for now.

[uncle ray]

11. it is perfectly fair that we pay for our own war machine.

we are not defending the world, we are waging war on the world.

and truth be told, the other nations ARE the ones paying. they've been paying the price to us for years, now we are paying the contractors of war with the gains of our previous wars and actions.

[The2ndWheel]

13. It's really the war machine of the developed world

The US isn't waging war on the world, and certainly not countries similar to itself. It already did that, which is why they're similar. It's the stick to any international organization's carrot, whatever that's worth. There is no global infrastructure, so this is the setup that we have.

We have a few hundred regional governments around the world, all acting in their own interests. Because of the way history has unfolded, and with the US being the last military power standing from the 20th century, we're stuck with it, until it collapses, or until it's overtaken by something else.

[Mari333]

10. knr

what adolescent monsters would unrec this?

oh yeah, impotent kids in their momma's basements, playing war games on their computers and eating pizza.

[MilesColtrane]

12. No 'Rods from God'?

I'm guessing that's because it's not new.

Hell, there may already be a launch platform up there now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rods_from_god